slumber of stone
by vigilante'sgirl
Summary: prophesies, pixies, and pirates, oh my! what has susan gotten herself into? all will be told. so, r&r. liz201 chapter three up
1. Chapter 1

_**Slumber of stone**_

_**Chapter one.**_

My grandmother was Wendy Darling. Yes, the Wendy Darling, the one who had all those miraculous adventures with Peter Pan. She was also my guardian after my father, a wealthy merchant, died. My mother had been a whore and had died a year after I was born. Now Wendy-bird, as she loved being called by me and the other children on that street in London, wasn't really my grandmother in the biological sense, but she had been the only person that my father would have trusted with a lame dog. He told me once when I was four that all of his family was made up of snakes and jackals.

During the night, if I had a nightmare Wendy would rush up to my room no matter what hour of the night it was and tell me one of her stories and hold me until I fell asleep. There was always love in that house from the day I turned nine and she took me in to the day I turned thirteen and she passed away.

She told me that if I was still a child when she passed on with her last words she would tell me a secret that only a child could know or understand. She had also told me that the attic was off limits so when I was old enough to put two and two together I figured that the attic had something to do with the secret. I had no interest in finding out by breaking a rule and by no means did I want her to die, she had been the only person who had cared about me other than my father and, perhaps, my mother. She had been the only person who understood my weird quirks and how I was more mature in thought than my peers and had a larger vocabulary than any of them.

I had rarely ever seen her upset, but when she was I knew exactly what to do. When she was sitting down I would climb into her lap or, and this only came about when I was older and couldn't sit in her lap any more, sit on the floor cross legged at her feet and ask her to tell me a story. She would say, "What sort of a story?" as if she knew what I was about to say. My reply was always the same every time, "A Peter Pan story.". With that she would begin and as the story progressed I watched as the years melted away from her face giving her the light of youth once again. There were occasions, though, when she would say, "Why don't you tell _me _a story?" and so I would begin to make up a Peter Pan story of my own. I always insisted that her stories were better, thought.

When I was twelve-and-a-half we found out about the cancer. The doctors said that she would be lucky if she lived till my next birthday, which was July third. They offered to put her in an institution so that she would have a better chance of living her full life span. She refused. That day when we went home she sat me down and told me the full account of her adventures and how she had a large fortune in the bank and that I was the soul heir to that sum of money.

We lived out those months before my birthday as thought it was stolen time that we had to make good use of. We traveled the globe visiting every country I had ever heard of and a few I that hadn't. Then, on the eve of my birthday, we returned home and she asked me a question I should have been expecting, but wasn't. "Are you a child still?" she asked. I thought for a moment how I was more mature than my peers, but then I realized that it was the kind of mature that made you want to cling to childhood as much as possible. Then I looked into the anxious face of the woman who raised me. "Yes." I said and a light came into her eyes that made her look twenty years younger.

"I am dieing." she said, after sitting down on one of the old chairs in the living room, as thought I didn't already know, "I can feel it in my bones, the tiredness of old age. When I ascend those stairs to my room, I shall never walk back down. You, my dear child, will inherit all of my belongings. Including those of which I have kept in the attic. Now, to business. There is a prophesy that a child who goes to Neverland without having ever met Peter Pan before and came there of their own free will, shall save Neverland from the Slumber of Stone, whatever that may be. Tinkerbell told me this for some reason which is unbeknownst to me, but she said that the child would be given gifts from three out of the four worlds and would remain there forever." "What worlds?" I interjected forgetting that it was rude to interrupt. "The worlds are really just the different societies of Neverland. There are the pixies, the mermaids, the Indians, and the pirates." "What about the lost boys?" I asked. "They are a part of all societies so they aren't their own group. And, of course, the pirates wouldn't give you anything but a canon ball to the gut."

And, with that, she rose from her chair and said "I bid you goodnight. Take care of your self. After I am in my room, go to the attic and prepare for your journey while I prepare for mine." "Thank you, for every thing." I said. "Not at all, Susan. Goodbye." after saying that, she hugged me for the last time and, even though it sounds ungrateful, during that moment I couldn't find a single reason to be sad because, after all, isn't death just a new beginning. "Goodbye, maybe I'll see you I the next life if I get there." and with that we parted ways, her going up the stairs to her room and myself going to the other set of stairs on the other side of the house which lead to the attic trap door.


	2. Chapter 2

_**Chapter two.**_

When I heard the door to her room shut, I walked up the stairs and pulled open the trap door, being tall for my age and somewhat willowy, I had no trouble. The ladder came down a little faster than I thought it would, thus it landed squarely upon my foot, which I did not have time to move. Barely holding in the multiple curse words that came to mind and mouth, I made my way up the ladder and into the attic. After fumbling in the darkness for some time, I finally found what I was looking for, an oil lamp. Turning it on I was able, as you can guess, to take a better look at my surroundings.

There was a small table made of oak in the middle of the room and on it lay a sliver dagger with a sapphire bejeweled hilt and a belt with a silver inscription that I couldn't read; I found out later that it was written in mermish, a satchel that was glowing with a golden light, and a note. The note said:

_Dearest Susan,_

_You have been the light of my life and I thank you for every moment of every day. My adventures with Peter could never hold a candle to my adventures with you. In death I will remember your grey eyes, summer smile, and inquisitive nature. Braiding your black hair every morning before school was the highlight of my day. Good luck to you and all your endeavourers._

_Aunt Wendy._

Near the window was hanging the very sort of clothes I had always wanted, a tunic with leggings and buckskin shoes. The tunic was dark blue with silver trim while the leggings were grey. To the tunic was pinned a note that said: _happy birthday! _Quickly, I began to change out of my old clothes and into my new adventure gear. Soon, I was dressed and was standing at the window about to sprinkle pixie dust over my self and fling open the latch and go off into the night when I noticed another note. On this was written the account number and how to access it; which I will not disclose here for that would be rather foolish.

After realizing that I had best make certain that I hadn't left any thing that I might need, I began to search the room, but found nothing else of interest; fact is, I found noting else at all and I certainly wasn't going to take the table or the cobwebs with me. So, with that out of the way, I did the whole pixie dust bit and opened the window; then, after stepping on the window sill, I made the mistake of looking down. I immediately regretted it because in that instance I realized just how far to the ground it was and, should the pixie dust fail, I would be in a world of hurt and might not escape with my life, for that matter.

Quickly, I tore my eyes away from the ground, and began to think happy thoughts. Suddenly, I noticed that my feet were no longer on the sill and, after opening my eyes, I realized that they were a few inches above it; in other words, I was flying. Well really more floating, but you get the idea.

After doing a few laps around the room I landed and walked to the other side of the room a prepared for takeoff. In school I had been a moderately good sprinter, so I thought that if I got a good running start I might get there faster. I was quite wrong, it didn't slow me down any, but I didn't get going any faster than I would have otherwise; I only learned this later so, at the time, I thought I was flying faster than anyone who had been hit with pixie dust before me and that my record could never be broken. There would be some salve for this wound to my pride, thought, an that was when I found out I could beat Peter in a race, but that would come later. Now my main concern was to get to Neverland in one piece.

There had been on moment of panic when I was flying over France, I knew my geography better than Wendy did when she set out on the same journey, when I got the stars confused in my head and was heading at the wrong angle, but that was soon sorted out and I got there just fine.

As I drew closer to the island I realized that there was something horribly wrong.


	3. Chapter 3

_**Chapter three.**_

All was still on the island, the waters did not move, and no animal made so much as a peep. The sky, the land, and the water were grey. I decided to make a quick flight around the island to visit the places that Wendy had told me so much about and see what damage was done. It made the most sense to start at the point closest to me and so, summoning what courage I could, I flew closer to the four mast pirate ship that sat in the key.

My landing skills left something to be desired, I soon realized, as I fell, rather than gracefully descended, to the deck of the ship, but worries about my landing capabilities soon vanished as I realized that I was not standing on the wood of a deck, but rather, on stone. I took the liberty to walk around the deck to see what had become of the pirates, I soon found out.

As I walked toward the prow I found myself suddenly surrounded by the statues of fleeing pirates, their faces twisted in fear. Eventually, I was force to stop because the crowd had become so thick that it had formed an impenetrable wall. Wanting to know what had stopped the pirates short, I flew to the front to get a closer view. At what I saw, I couldn't help, but laugh.

There at the front of the boat in what had once been water, but was now stone, was a crocodile staring up at the ship eagerly, its eyes locked on Captain Hook, in front of the Captain stood a short, squat man I presumed to be Smee. He was scolding the crocodile and trying to get it to leave, but it had seen its prize and wasn't going to back off. What made it so funny was the look of absolute terror on the Captain's face. It was one of those looks that you never forget, especially because of the fact that the Captain had been so desperate to escape that he was nearly sitting on Smee's shoulders. The hilarity was soon forgotten, though, when I saw the terror on the faces of the crew that stood around him. Thus sobered, I moved on. The next stop was Mermaid Lagoon.

As I reached it, I found no sign of the mer-folk, just as I suspected. I didn't think that they would have stayed above water, after all, it was only natural for them to try to escape. Now that I knew that they saw whatever it was coming, why else would the pirates have run to the prow, terror written on their faces. Next on the check list was the Indian encampment.

Usually I can tell what people are going to do because of the psychology camp that I had gone to the year before which basically said, and I quote, "One person acting as an individual can be brave, smart, and many other honorable things, but people as a group are like a heard of cows, lily livered, stupid, and egotistic." I didn't think cows had egos, but the rest I had found to be true through out my life, so, it didn't really matter to me. Anyway, sorry I got sidetracked, on with the story.

The Indians reaction was one of bravery. They had actually taken up arms against this unknown threat, unknown to me, anyway. It was sort of frightening at first to fly over the warriors, their eyes making it clear to whatever threat they faced that even if they did die, they would takeout as many of whatever it was before they passed on to the next world. As I landed, I found the shattered remains of many spears that had been thrown at this danger only to be turned to stone and fall to the ground. I presumed that the attack had been made at night because the campfires had been lit. I stood there in the middle of the camp ground for a minuet, wondering what had happened and if I was to late. I shook myself of these grim thoughts, I would have plenty of time to think after I stopped at the last place, or so I thought, that was inhabited, Hangman's Tree.

Have you ever felt eager and hesitant at the same time? If you have, then you know what I was going through as I made my way to Peter Pan's hideout. As I arrived, the first thing I saw was a boy my age rushing to get the Lost Boys inside before what ever it was came overhead while a pixie stood on one of the limbs over Peter's head and looked as though she was trying to tell him something, her mouth wide open and her finger pointing toward the sea. I did not have much time to ponder this, thought, for night was coming and I was very tired.

Entering the hideout via hole in the top of the tree I entered the main bedroom that was used by the Lost Boys and promptly opened my satchel to see what was in it. Mentally I thanked Wendy for inside was a blanket, a few boxes of crackers, and some water bottles. Taking out all the supplies that were inside it, I folded up my satchel as best I could and lay my head upon it.

When I awoke the next morning, I began my search for answers. I scoured the once inhabited by living people sections of the island for clues as to what the thing was that had caused this and how to reverse what seemed like a curse. It wasn't until that evening when, after having kicked a stone tree in frustration and hoping around like and idiot for a few minuets, I noticed the clue the had been staring me in the face for the last hour and a half, Tinkerbell. It was again getting late and so I made up my mind that the next day I would follow the finger, so to speak, and hope that the pixie wasn't sending me on a wild goose chase.


End file.
